LOS ANGELES — After nearly five years of brutal economic decline, government retrenchment and a widespread loss of confidence in its future, California is showing tentative signs of a rebound. There is evidence of job growth, economic stability, a resurgent housing market and rising spirits in a state that was among the worst hit by the recession.

In September, California posted its biggest month-to-month drop in unemployment in the 36 years the state has collected statistics, even as its rate remains, at 10.1 percent, the third highest in the country. Last month, California payrolls swelled with 45,000 new jobs, the largest gross number of any state in November. The unemployment rate in Orange County was 7.2 percent in October, below the national average.

The housing market, whose collapse in a storm of foreclosures helped worsen the economic decline, has snapped back in many, though definitely not all, parts of the state. Houses are sitting on the market for a shorter time and selling at higher prices, and new home construction is rising. There was a 25 percent jump in home sales in Southern California in October compared with a year ago.

After years of spending cuts and annual state budget deficits larger than the entire budgets of some states, last week the independent California Legislative Analyst’s Office projected a deficit for next year of $1.9 billion — down from $25 billion at one point — and said California might post a $1 billion surplus in 2014. That was due in no small part to voter approval of Proposition 30, promoted by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise taxes temporarily to avoid up to $6 billion in education cuts.

“The state’s economic recovery, prior budget cuts and the additional, temporary taxes provided by Proposition 30 have combined to bring California to a promising moment: the possible end of a decade of acute state budget challenges,” the report said. “Our economic and budgetary forecast indicates that California’s leaders face a dramatically smaller budget problem in 2013-14.”

And 38 percent of Californians say the state is heading in the right direction, according to a survey this month by USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times. For most places, that figure would seem dismal. But it is double what it was 13 months ago.

California still faces major problems. The economic recovery is hardly uniform. Central California and the Inland Empire — the suburban sprawl east of Los Angeles — continue to stagger under the collapse of the construction market, and some economists wonder if they will ever join the coastal cities on the prosperity train. Cities, most recently San Bernardino, are facing bankruptcy, and public employee pension costs loom as a major threat to the state budget and those of many municipalities, including Los Angeles.

A federal report this month said that by some measures, California has the worst poverty in the nation. The river of people coming west in search of the economic dream, traditionally an economic and creative driver, has slowed to a crawl.

Still, the fear among many Californians that the bottom had fallen out appears to be fading. Economists said they were spotting many signs of incipient growth, including a surge in rental costs in the Bay Area, which suggests an influx of people looking for jobs.

“I think the state is turning a corner,” said Enrico Moretti, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkley. He said the recovery was creating regional lines of economic demarcation — “We are going to see a more and more polarized state,” he said — but that overall, California was emerging from the recession.

Richard Green, the director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California, said the foreclosure storm was beginning to subside, and fewer foreclosed homes were flooding the market. That has meant homes are selling faster at higher prices — which means fewer homeowners under water.

“The most important thing is, if you look at job growth in California for the last 18 months or so, it’s been higher than average for the country,” he said.

The change comes in a presidential election year when California faced intensified attacks by conservative leaders, presenting the state as a model of Democratic policies gone awry. Mitt Romney compared California to Greece. Peggy Noonan declared that the “mythic place where Sutter struck gold” had become a symbol of failure. “California is going down,” she wrote. The conservative Manhattan Institute devoted an 8,500-word report to “the Great California Exodus.”

Gray Davis, a former Democratic governor, noted that voters had approved initiatives to begin repairing a notoriously dysfunctional government. It no longer takes a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to increase spending (the requirement remains for tax increases), and a nonpartisan election system went into effect this month.

“We’ve been used to being beat up by the Eastern Seaboard for a very long time,” Davis said. It was, he said, a case of coastal envy: “I can see the sun glistening off the ocean as I look out my office window.”

Joe Mathews, a co-author of “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It,” said California’s main challenge was its governance structure.

“There’s a great history of trashing on us,” he said. “Just the same way people like to talk bad about the prettiest girl in school. As badly governed as we are, we have our strengths: in trade, venture capital, in weather.”

“There is reason to feel better for the state,” Mathews said. “I think the economy is coming back.”

Still, there is evidence upon which to base the attacks. Conservatives argue that the state’s latest tax increases and its thicket of regulations will drive out businesses and people.

“I was born and raised in California; I love the state, but I think California has been going downhill for quite a while,” said Bradley Schiller, a professor of economics at the University of Nevada in Reno. “The ignorance of voters is appalling, not to see their own self-interest in restoring their state.”

Yet the surest sign of a resurgent California might have been captured by observant Twitter posters last week in Southern California. There, Romney — he of California-is-Greece fame — was spotted one day at Disneyland and another pumping gasoline into his SUV before returning to his beachfront home in San Diego to celebrate Thanksgiving week.